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Total number of comments: 11 (since 2011-09-30 14:19:07)

I was born in India, but now live in Pakistan. I'm very impressed by this website and have been visiting it for over a year. My interest in I/P mainly has two origins. One, it is the continuation of colonization that has caused untold harm and I think the first person who writes a truly incisive and insightful study of it would be regarded at par with Freud and the like. Second, I was married to an English Jewish girl for 6 years and feel an empathy with those people as only somebody who was affected by colonization could.

Quite by coincidence, here is a link to an article published today in The Express Tribune newspaper in Pakistan. They are linked to The International Herald Tribune and in fact publish and distribute it daily along with their own paper.
The punch line towards the end is particularly telling and makes one even more skeptical of the EU's recent pronouncement/demand vis a vis the occupied territories.
Here is the link: http://tribune.com.pk/story/578278/what-happened-to-me-when-i-landed-in-israel/.

Watching the video of Dirk's interview gave me the impression that the questions and answers were 'prepared', meaning that Dirk's had received the questions in advance and given time to prepare his answers. Any good actor can see from the body language and the substance plus delivery of the answers that nothing was spontaneous. The defensive opening sentence regarding his wife's 'independence' would be truly farcical if the context was not of as serious as it was. I wonder if Dirk's knew how Kurt Waldheim was taken down when he stood for the Presidency of Austria.....a telling blow delivered at the most vulnerable moment!

Her prejudices simply run too deep, so deep in fact that all she is trying, or able, to do is obliterate the humanity of the other side in her effort to make her views sound credible. There is desperation running all the way through her writing (I don't want to use a more appropriate but rude word) and I am fearful of the future, not just in the ME, but in the wider world. We are going back in time in more ways than we are imagining and it is indeed a frightening prospect when the vastly more powerful live on the brink of insanity.

Seafoid: " British media isn’t split into 2 mutually unintelligible echo chambers either. "
The most eloquent of descriptions of what the American media has reduced itself to!! Though with Murdoch around, the British media is not out of the woods.

My comments on the link on Facebook:
Well, the obvious is being stated again, but will it make a difference this time? I remember Russell's tribunal on Vietnam, which Jean Paul Sartre chaired and Bertie said something to the effect that of course he didn't share Sartre's opinion on Marxism, but it was his integrity that made him choose the man. Let's hope people of varied opinions see the integrity of the panelists and also see the truth that desperately needs universal acknowledgement and attention. It had been committed that the post World War world be free of colonialism. That this has not happened is largely the reason that we live in a fragmented world.

I certainly do not see Israeli attitudes changing for the better. They now even carry their hubris to foreign lands. I was recently on holiday in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where I was told this tale by an Englishman who lived there. He used to work at a Guest House owned by an Israeli. When a prospective guest came the owner greeted him thus: 'Shalom'. If the response he received was not 'Shalom' the person was told there were no vacancies.

There was a recent case brought by an Israeli lady against an Israeli Palestinian man who presented himself as a Jew and made love to her. Such was her subsequent revulsion that she took him to court. I wish I had the link to it.

Wonderful article Phil…..really tells you where we need to go. However, there are other dimensions to the issue and addressing them is as important if we are to move forward.
The Arab world, and the wider Muslim world has to change also, but in the present set up I simply do not see that happening. By ‘set up’ I do not just mean the internal situation, but the West’s relationship with the monarchs and dictators. They are being propped up and supported by the US. Let me give a few examples:
1) The recent arm sale of 70 billion US$....these are mainly for domestic use in controlling dissent. A further 30 or more billion $ are being bought from elsewhere.
2) There were protests in Saudi Arabia around the same time as in Egypt. These were hurriedly crushed, the leader apparently killed, and little mention of it ever reached the wider world.
3) The protests in Bahrain were brutally suppressed and measures taken to see they didn’t happen again. It was mainly Saudi arms, tanks and military personnel who carried out this suppression. Obama made no mention of the Saudi insurgency or Saudi contribution to the massacre in Bahrain.
4) This from The New York Times of July 22, 2011:
he New York Times reports:
5) A proposed Saudi counterterrorism law that would give the Interior Ministry sweeping powers and mandate jail sentences for criticizing the king would effectively squelch political dissent, human rights advocates said on Thursday.
6) The law would allow prisoners to be held without trial, and trials and appeals to be held secretly, Saudi and international rights advocates said. It would also grant the Interior Ministry broad powers including the ability to tap telephones or search houses without permission from the judiciary.
7) Saudi activists have long accused the judicial system and the Interior Ministry of a lack of respect for human rights, even when such rights exist legally. The new law, the activists said, would legalize those practices, removing all restraints.
8) “Every single thing we criticized them about in the past is going to be legitimate,” Bassem Alim, the defense lawyer for a group of men imprisoned in 2007 on terrorism charges, said by telephone. The men were formally charged only last August, and their real crime, Mr. Alim said, was taking rudimentary steps toward forming a political party.
9) “Ninety-nine percent of the law has nothing to do with terrorism, it has to do with political dissent,” he said.
10) The fact of the matter is that it suits the West to have these people in power, who control not just the people but the vast oil wealth. For when that wealth is in a limited number of hands there is a better chance those vast amounts will be invested in the West. Where else could these fortunes find a place. Note the Saudi owner of 12 ½ per cent of Murdoch’s media empire, the second biggest share holder after Murdoch himself. Saudi shareholding in the Carlyle Group. Qatar’s development of the prestigious ONE HYDE PARK project in central London, to name just a few. As an aside, it was amusing to note George W Bush’s body language when he was with Saudi royals. I wish I had the photos or references to give here.
11) Also, I am certain there will be no radical changes in the Muslim world while Saudi Arabia continues the way it is. The Royal family is the guardian of the Holy places of Islam and their legitimacy comes mainly, if not entirely, from this fact. Any movement towards change in the Islamic world, in my view, has to have Saudi Arabia as its epicenter. The bulk of the oil revenues go to the Royal family so why should they want things changed when the status quo gives them all that they have. What is more, they have better protection than any Mafia family ever had: the United States government. It seems we are all doomed to live this status quo – West, East, Christian, Muslim, Jew and the peripherals – and that in the end it makes us all lesser human beings is contemporary mans’ biggest failing. The hypocrisies it has given birth to are too staggering and far too many to record.

The banning of South Africa from major sports events played a significant role in dismantling apartheid. England stopped playing cricket with them when SA refused to accept a black Englishman on a tour to South Africa. Eventually all countries stopped playing cricket with them and considering how integral a part sport was in SA society it hurt them badly. In fact, while negotiations were going on with Nelson Mandela for the removal of white rule although apartheid laws were still in force, Mandela requested the world community to resume sporting links as sport was so close to the South African's heart. This did happen as did the end of apartheid. Therefore any suggestion that sport should not be brought into the picture as far as the I/P conflict goes is absolutely ridiculous.

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